


When It Pours

by Azzandra



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Domestic, Fluff, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 19:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5638444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a miserable, rainy morning. The Sole Survivor cooks breakfast for her companions, and they discuss her habits from the old world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When It Pours

**Author's Note:**

> This was one of the very first fanfics I wrote for Fallout, but I never posted it because I wrote it long before finishing my first playthrough (and before even meeting all the companions). However, some of Phil's attitude towards the old world was reified in this fic, and ended up inspiring parts of "Where the Roads Converge" and "vacationing on mars". So I'm throwing it up here.

It was the sunshine that Phil lived for. When it was cheerfully bright, and the breeze was warm, the world felt like it was going to be alright. What the Commonwealth got, then, for three days in a row, was heavy, miserable rain. 

Nobody liked the rain. Phil least of all, because it began to pour the very day she planned to leave Sanctuary Hills to check up on some outlying farms, but nobody else was thrilled, either. Preston stoically attended to his guard post with a slanted frown, as water dripped and rolled off the brim of his hat. 

Hancock was supposed to join Phil on her trip but he had probably seen the rain, figured out Phil had no intention of slogging out through that weather, and summarily shot up with whatever he had rattling around in his pockets. Now he was sprawled on her couch, giving her a heavy-lidded smile through his chem haze.

"Well. At least someone is making the best of this day," Phil had remarked wryly.

"You know it, sister," Hancock replied, stretching out and lacing his hands behind his head.

Phil huffed and turned to the small kitchen area to make herself busy, just as Piper shuffled into the living room, still rumpled from sleep.

"Blue, you haven't left yet," she remarked, as she clambered onto one of the stools at the counter.

"It's raining," Phil replied.

"Yeah, kinda hard not to notice when you happen to sleep next to a wall full of holes."

Phil grinned in sympathy, before turning to open the ice box. With the fridge no longer functional, this was where she kept all her perishable food. Just as well, since she doubted a Mirelurk egg would fit in the fridge anyway. The day called for a hot breakfast, she decided, and took out the egg.

On the road, she could whip up an omelette with just some dirty water, but as it happened, she had some cooking oil and a few vegetables bartered from Vault 81, a proper pan and an actual, improvised stove, so she could make something a little beyond palatable. 

Phil turned on the radio and began the tedious work of cracking and then beating the gigantic egg. Travis talked about her--of course--but also the rain, which seemed to be hitting Diamond City as well at the moment. Piper worked on her notes at the counter. She would have an article written up by the time she started heading back to Diamond City. Hancock was still lounging on the couch.

The air warmed up considerably as the stove burned, and Phil felt herself lulled into a sense of domesticity. She poured the whipped egg into a couple of the largest pans she owned, but there was still a considerable amount left over. No matter, she'd make more later, for whoever had missed breakfast. For now, she focused her attention on the cooking omelette.

Only a little while later, she was startled by a knock on the door.

McCready, with a hopeful expression, stood before the door.

"Something smells good here," he said, his eyes flicking over Phil's shoulder.

"Well, come in, then," she said, and stepped aside.

He grinned widely as he strode in. He must have had a nose better than Dogmeat, Phil mused. At least when it came to food.

In a few short minutes came Nick, who did not complain about the rain, but had to wring out his coat and shake off his hat. Technically, he was supposed to be headed back to Diamond City that day. But Piper was also supposed to be accompanying him, just so they'd watch each other's backs, and there was no way Piper was going to travel through this weather and get all her notes soaked through. He, too, was stuck there until the rain let up.

Then came a sad, pathetic scratching at the door, and Nick opened it just a few moments before Phil could tell him to wait. Dogmeat trotted inside, and promptly shook himself off, spraying everyone in range. Hancock on the couch and MacCready on the ottoman right next to it recoiled at being splattered, but Nick took the brunt of it. The trench coat he'd just wrung out was now completely drenched again.

"Well, since you're already soaked," Phil said to Nick, "do you mind taking Dogmeat to the bathroom and toweling him off? The, uh... wet dog smell isn't really setting the breakfast mood."

"Sure," Nick grumbled, grabbing Dogmeat by the collar.

"Thanks," Phil said. "You can hang your clothes to dry, too. I don't think they're doing your circuits any favors at the moment. There's dry clothing in the bedroom dresser."

"Usually I'd expect a meal  _before_ the clothes come off," Nick replied, quirking a grin at her.

"Usually I'd be cooking breakfast _after_ the clothes came off," she replied. "The world's clearly gone mad."

After Nick herded Dogmeat off to the bathroom, Phil returned all her attention to the omelette.

The final arrival came in the form of Preston, so fresh off his guard duty rotation he hadn't even holstered his laser musket yet. He glanced around the room, then down the hall where Nick was giving Dogmeat some good natured scolding, and raised an eyebrow at Phil.

"Having a meeting?" he asked.

"We're having _breakfast_ ," Phil informed him tartly, as she placed a stack of plates on the counter.

The plates were mismatched and old and chipped at the rims, but they were as clean as Phil could get them, and she judged them to be at least more hygienic to eat off of than the floor. This was, coincidentally, the kind of low standard that would have profoundly horrified her before getting popsicled by an amoral corporation.

She sectioned off the omelette in roughly equal pieces, and put the pieces on the plate.

MacCready and Hancock actually left their seats to claim their own plates, and soon enough everyone was hunched over their own hot breakfast, rapturous looks on all their faces as they breathed in the scent of fresh omelette.

Phil opened a drawer and rattled around in it, noticing with dismay that she only seemed to have two forks, one spoon, and an old butter knife.

"Oh no, I don't have enough cutlery for--" She looked up to notice every single one of her companions were using their fingers. "--all of you."

Piper was the only one who actually had the decency to look sheepish.

"It's okay, Blue, we're good," she assured, in between nipping at the edges of her omelette, where it had started to cool.

"More than good," MacCready added, talking with a full mouth already.

"Isn't that hot?" Phil asked.

"Oh, yeah, it burns," MacCready replied, and sucked in air with a pained expression. "But _so good_ ," he moaned.

Everybody else at least had the sense to rip off smaller pieces and let it cool a bit before eating, except Phil, who took out a fork.

"Careful, she's hitting us with pre-War manners," Hancock chuckled.

Phil very pointedly used her fork and took a dainty lady-like bite of omelette while maintaining eye contact with Hancock. He chuckled again in response, looking not at all abashed.

At that moment, Nick walked back into the living room, his customary detective get-up now replaced with a shirt and slacks with suspenders. Dogmeat trotted after him happily, and went straight to his food bowl behind the counter.

"Looking dapper, Valentine," Piper remarked.

"For once," Hancock added in an undertone.

"It _is_ nice to see you in something not stained and crumpled," Phil agreed.

"Yeah, yeah," Nick said slowly, hooking his thumbs in the suspenders. "Wasn't sure you wanted me messing up those nice clean clothes you have in the dresser. Spend a lot of time on laundering, do you?"

"Well, since we set up that purification system, we have had a surplus of clean water," Phil replied. "Even keeping our stocks topped off, it... would just go to waste otherwise."

"And you iron it all afterwards," Nick said.

"Well, of course," Phil said, now a bit flustered.

This conversation somehow ended with everyone crowded in Phil's bedroom, peering into the drawer of clean, ironed and perfectly folded clothing. It was wafting a vaguely lemony scent that the present company only vaguely and from hearsay recognized it as the smell of clean.

"Look at that, you really folded everything in there," Piper remarked.

"It's all so bright," MacCready added. "So... shiny."

"You have some weird-ass hobbies, sister," was Hancock's contribution, as he still chewed on his omelette.

Phil sighed from the hallway.

"You know," she said, "pre-War, walking around with grimy wrinkled clothes would have been the weirder thing."

"Pre-War, you didn't have radioactive water," Preston pointed out.

Phil chewed on this for a few moments.

"Not as a rule," she muttered, before heading back into the living room.

She was followed by her companions soon enough--there was no fun in ribbing her if she wasn't there, after all. Their breakfast finished, Phil collected all their dishes.

The room was mostly quiet, save for the persistent plinking of rain against the roof. They had all twigged onto her melancholy mood, and since it was not something she was generally prone to, nobody was entirely sure what to say.

It was Piper who bit the bullet first.

"It must still be an adjustment for you, huh, Blue?" she said.

Phil dumped the entire stack of dishes into a basin of clear, purified water, and squirted her own home-made dish soap over it.

"Well, I would be happier if hygiene standards weren't so much more lax than I'm used to," Phil replied. "But I'm not..." She sighed before continuing. "I'm not going to hold it against anyone that the world is a mess. It was dangerous before the War, too."

"I, uh, don't think that's really comparable," Piper said. "You didn't exactly have super mutants back then."

"Or radscorpions," MacCready added.

"Or raiders," Hancock said.

"Or teleporting units of hostile synths," Preston added, before looking to Nick and adding apologetically, "No offense."

"None taken on grounds of accuracy," Nick replied, lighting himself a cigarette.

"No, we had the looming threat of nuclear annihilation constantly hanging over our heads instead," Phil replied, laughing dryly.

"Yeah, that does sound like a bummer," MacCready conceded.

Phil continued to scrub the dishes with dogged persistence as she talked.

"I don't know if you can really understand just... how much everyone was afraid," she said quietly. "It's hard to explain, but it was... stifling. The fear. And we didn't talk about it. We did everything possible not to think about it, about how the world might well and truly end in our lifetime. Everything was distraction. Shiny cars and the latest gadgets to drown it out. Going out every day, to the pictures, to concerts, to loud, obnoxious public events, where we could pretend not to hear the nagging voice in the back of our heads telling us we might die at any moment and there's nothing we could do to stop it."

She stacked the clean dishes aside, not raising her eyes from her task as she began scrubbing the next plate.

"In some ways, it's a relief to be here now. The bombs already fell. Worst case scenario happened, and humans are still plugging along and hanging on. Hell, the world's a different sort of mess, but at least you can _shoot_ raiders and radscorpions. I'll take this every time over living like that again."

She looked around the room to see everybody had lapsed into surprised silence. Even Nick was regarding the plume of smoke coming off his cigarette with a pensive expression on his face. It was likely the first time they'd ever heard anyone express the sentiment that the world might remotely be better in any way compared to how it was before the Great War, and it appeared she'd given them all food for thought.

Phil put another plate aside.

"I guess I'm trying to say, I feel lucky to be here sometimes. With all of you."

This seemed to cut right through the thoughtful mood, and the entire present company went back to friendly ribbing again.

Phil endured it all with a smile.


End file.
